Pope Leo XIV continues to pray and push for an end to the war in Ukraine and has sent two envoys to the country this week to express his closeness to the people there: Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister.

Their visit comes at a time of intensifying conflict and at a moment when Russia is beginning to suffer gravely, especially economically, from the consequences of a war that it had thought would end in months if not weeks but that has now lasted more than four years. There is increasing international pressure, including from the United States, to bring an end to the war, but it remains to be seen if Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who started this war, really wants to end it.

According to a recent study by the German broadcast network Deutsche Welle, Russian forces suffered approximately 1.4 million battlefield casualties—including killed, wounded and missing soldiers—between February 2022 and June 2026. Around half a million Russian soldiers have been killed, three times the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed. 

President Putin called Pope Leo on June 4, 2025, less than a month after his election, signaling that the channel of communication is not closed. Pope Leo has received Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on three occasions and spoke with him by phone on Good Friday of this year.

Leo has spoken frequently about the war in Ukraine since he was elected pope on May 8, 2025. He spoke forcefully on Feb. 22 of this year, the eve of the fourth anniversary of the start of the war, and made “a heartfelt” appeal: “Let the weapons fall silent, let the bombings cease, let an immediate ceasefire be reached, and let dialogue be strengthened to pave the way toward peace.”

An envoy for peace 

Cardinal Zuppi arrived in Ukraine on July 13 for a four-day visit. It is his second visit to the country; he first came in June 2023 when Pope Francis appointed him as his special envoy to work for the return of all of the 20,000 children forcibly taken to Russia during the war and to facilitate the exchange of prisoners on both sides and the repatriation of those who had died in the war.

On that first mission, the cardinal visited Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and Beijing. Some children have been returned since then, and many prisoners of war have been exchanged, thanks to the intervention of Cardinal Zuppi as well as several governmental actors at the international level.

On July 14, before traveling to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, which has been heavily attacked by Russian missiles and drones in recent weeks, the cardinal met with dozens of prisoners of war from over 50 countries fighting for Russia captured by Ukrainian forces, the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire reported. 

The prisoners are being held at Ukraine’s Zakhid-1 detention center in the country’s western Lviv region, close to the border with Poland. The cardinal brought three gifts for the prisoners, which he personally gave to each of them, Vatican Media reported. He told the prisoners: “Pope Leo sent the nuncio and me here to bring you hope. He is praying for you, that the war may end and that you may return home.” Explaining the three gifts, he said: “The pope asked me to bring you a key chain” with “the hope that soon you will put your house key on it, so you can open your front door and embrace your loved ones”; a prayer card with the image of the Salus Populi Romani that is “for Christians, the image of Our Mother, but for everyone, an image of hope”; and a photograph of Pope Leo XIV, “who sent me here to tell you that he is praying for peace and for the war to end.”

Cardinal Zuppi told the prisoners: “We want to tell you today to look to the future with hope—that you will return home, that the war will end. And we pray fervently that it will end soon.”

Cardinal Zuppi was accompanied by the Lithuanian-born papal nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, who speaks Russian, and Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash. The cardinal then toured the detention center and visited the living quarters of the prisoners, the infirmary and the chapel, where he prayed.

In Kyiv this morning, July 15, the cardinal “took part in celebrations marking the Baptism of Kyivan Rus’,” Vatican Media reported. It said the celebration commemorated “the Christianization of the country in 988 by Prince Volodymyr the Great, who is venerated as a saint by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and whose legacy is associated with the historical and spiritual roots of Eastern Europe.” The day is both a civil and religious observance and officially designated as Ukrainian Statehood Day, following a 2021 decree signed by President Zelensky that added it to the national calendar. 

Cardinal Zuppi prayed during the ceremony in St. Michael’s Square, in front of the Golden-Domed Monastery, which has served as a memorial to those killed in the war since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. He did so after walking in procession with President Zelensky and other participants along the avenue beside the Memory Wall, where photographs of those killed during the war are displayed and where he placed a bouquet of red roses in their memory. 

Vatican Media said Cardinal Zuppi, “looking toward the sky from which missiles had once again struck civilian infrastructure during the [previous] night…offered a prayer in Ukrainian to ‘Almighty God’ for ‘a just peace’ in Ukraine.” He entrusted this intention to God “through the intercession of Saint Volodymyr” and, noting that the saint shares his name with both the president of Ukraine and the president of Russia, said, “May Saint Volodymyr enlighten the minds and hearts of the two heads of state, opening paths of justice and peace.”

He prayed: “May [God] grant a just peace [in Ukraine]. May prisoners return home, may children embrace their families once again, may the missing be found, and may everyone be able to mourn over the body of their loved one who has fallen. Inspire in each one of us the courage and wisdom to become builders of peace.”

The cardinal is scheduled to meet representatives of nongovernmental organizations working in the country later today.

Catholic restoration in Ukraine

As the cardinal finishes his visit tomorrow, Archbishop Gallagher will leave the Vatican for Ukraine. It will be his second visit to Ukraine; he first went there in May 2022, soon after the war started, and visited not only Kyiv but also the site of massacres by Russian forces at Bucha. In an interview with America on the first anniversary of the start of that war, the archbishop rejected President Putin’s narrative that the West had started the war and repeated Pope Francis’ call for an end to the conflict that, he said, must lead to “a just peace,” which, he said, “would mean that the Russians withdraw from the territory of Ukraine.” 

In an interview with America on March 25, 2024, he said:

We still support the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We do not endorse that the boundaries of countries should be changed by force. So that remains our position. We consider that a just position, and that is our position toward Ukraine. At the same time, we also recognize Ukraine’s right to make any steps that could make possible an agreement for a just peace, even regarding its territories. But this is not something that we can impose or expect of Ukraine. If Ukraine and its government want to do that, then that is entirely in their discretion.

He substantially repeated this position in another interview with America on Feb. 28, 2025. 

Pope Leo, in a letter published on June 20, appointed Archbishop Gallagher as his special envoy to participate in the celebrations marking the 35th anniversary of the restoration of the structures of the Latin rite church in Ukraine. The celebrations will take place on July 19 at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Berdychiv, a historic city in northern Ukraine, in an area where Christians were heavily persecuted over the years and especially in the 20th century; many Jews were killed in the same area during the Soviet and Nazi repression.

In the letter, reported on by Vatican Media, Pope Leo recalled that Pope Gregory IX sent a letter in 1234 to the Latin rite clergy and faithful living in the territory of present-day Ukraine expressing his concern for her “devoted and humble children…lest they be harassed by the assaults of wicked men” and his desire to protect them. Leo noted that in the years that followed, the Catholic community “frequently endured harassment, injury and plundering at the hands of persecutors of the Christian faith, who constantly laid snares for them.”

Pope Leo recalled that over the centuries the Catholic clergy and faithful living in that land offered a “powerful witness of faith” amid many trials and especially during the 20th century when, after the Second World War, “Ukraine was subjected to a regime inspired by Soviet ideology.” During that period, he said, “the Catholic Church in that region was subjected to a cruel persecution, organised and carried out by the civil authorities, whose aim was its complete eradication from among the people.”

He recalled that the church community in Ukraine subsequently “found new life and renewed growth” after the collapse of the Soviet Union and now celebrates the 35th anniversary of the restoration of its institutions, as well as the 25th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s historic visit to Ukraine in June 2001.

Pope Leo XIV also asked Archbishop Gallagher to pray for all the Ukrainian faithful, living and deceased, who suffer or have suffered “deeply because of the brutality of the war,” and to encourage those taking part in the celebrations to “implore peace for the world and for families, and to remain steadfast in fidelity to God’s commandments.”

Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.